Pajama Entrepreneur

The New York Times has an article called Can Blogs Become a Big Source of Jobs which talks about bloggers who get paid to write articles on global blog networks such as b5media (based in Toronto) and those who use blogs to get more business. Consultants and entrepreneurs can attract new business using blogs. Indeed, startups today have blogs to communicate with their users.

The NYT article has not hit on anything new. Many people are already familiar with WeblogsInc (which Jason Calacanis sold to AOL for $25 million) and the fact that they pay bloggers to write about particular subjects. Weblogsinc is an aggregation of blogs on topics ranging from automobiles to gadgets. I am a long-time reader of Engadget and the guy who writes it, Pete Rojas, is well-known in tech circles.

B5media is similar to WeblogsInc because they cover a wide range of topics and run ads across them. The bloggers get a bonus based upon the number of people who read their articles.

While being paid by someone to write a blog is a way to make money from blogging, I did things differently with Muniwireless.com. I set up my own blog and in the beginning, got advertisers for the site myself. Two years ago, I partnered with Microcast Communications to take Muniwireless.com to the next level: conferences, seminars, webinars and a magazine. I went beyond just blogging and with partners, created a small media company.

In all the articles I have read about the business of blogging or bloggers making a living, they never talk about this option. It’s a viable one.

Read my series on how to turn your blog into a media company.

The path I have chosen is not for everyone. It takes a lot of time to set up a blog and maintain it, especially if you host it yourself. Most bloggers go with Blogger.com, Wordpress.com or Typepad. Getting advertising is also not for everyone. It’s time consuming and most people don’t even know where to start. Signing up with a blog network such as B5Media or Weblogsinc may be the best way to make a living through blogging.

Here are the first eight chapters on turning your blog into a media company. They are based on my experience as the founder of Muniwireless.com.

Part 1: birth of Muniwireless

Part 2: first year of Muniwireless

Part 3: finding a business model

Part 4: the Ninth Circle of Hell

Part 5: becoming a niche online publisher

Part 6: miracles happen in laundromats

Part 7: getting readers, rising high on search engines

Part 8: Microcast tells how to grow a blog into a media company

I will be posting more in the next few weeks. If you have questions, please post in the comments section below.

So how did Microcast take Muniwireless to the next stage, from a blog to a vertically integrated media company (as I mentioned in part 6)? What is Microcast’s business model? Sam Whitmore, who runs Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey interviews Joe Panettieri of Microcast. Sam writes:

Take a look at MuniWireless.com. It’s fronted by blogger Esme Vos, recognized as an expert in the emerging field. It’s got a clean look, ample advertising, an event series or two — even a freshly posted commentary from tech industry legend Bob Frankston. The site looks like the work of a top-tier trade publisher, but MuniWireless.com is a custom web title produced by little-known Microcast Communications.

Go to Sam’s blog and listen to the podcast (6:54), short but very informative (click here).

In part 2 of this series, I mentioned that it took me a year to make money (via advertising) from my blog, Muniwireless.com. You won’t attract advertisers in the first month of blogging because you probably won’t have a lot of readers.

How many visitors do you need to attract advertisers? How do you get and keep loyal readers? How do you get the word out about your blog? How do you rise high on search engines such as Google? Continue reading »

Recently, I posted a series of articles on turning a blog into a media company — well, a small niche media company.

But if you want to hit the big time, i.e. building an online media business that rakes in $50 million+ in revenues, you’ll have to read two posts written by Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners. Jeremy knows the media business — he’s been with Citysearch, InterActiveCorp and AOL. Now, as a partner in a venture capital firm, he sees a lot of startups and decides which ones to fund.

In the first post, Jeremy lists three ways to grow your online media business:

- create a site with broad reach (but you’ll need 50 billion pageviews per year); or

- create a site that targets a specific demographic group (you will need 10 billion pageviews per year); or

- create a site with endemic advertising opportunities (a site with a narrowly targeted audience; you will need 2.5 billion pageviews per year).

The article goes into further detail into comparable websites and RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions), so it’s a must read. It’s very difficult to build that kind of media business. I can tell you that Muniwireless, which is more of a B2B site for people who care about citywide Wi-Fi and wide-area wireless networking, will not get to $50 million in revenues barring another miracle.

In the second post, Jeremy explains why it IS difficult to build a $50 million business (click here to read).

This is the story I like to tell often because it is so unbelievable. Back in May 2005, when Muniwireless.com had already established itself as the place to go to for all things muni Wi-Fi, I was wondering, how do I take it to the next stage? Many people were asking me to hold conferences and seminars, and I thought it would be fun to have an annual meetup of wireless enthusiasts.

I happened to be in San Francisco in May 2005, staying in a friend’s apartment in the Castro District. One day, I found myself in a laundromat (Toni Cleaners and Laundry) across Cafe Flore near the corner of Noe and Castro, waiting for the dryer to finish. I was bored, so I picked up a copy of the San Francisco Examiner, a local free paper, which I never usually read. I was flipping through the pages when suddenly a tiny article on the right hand side, caught my eye. It was a press release announcing the launch of Microcast Communications. After reading the description of their business, I knew they were the partners I needed to take Muniwireless to the next stage. Continue reading »

By May 2005, I had managed to build an online portal dedicated to a very specific topic: municipal wireless broadband networks. Without any investment other than my time and web hosting costs, the site became the authority on the subject of citywide Wi-Fi. Cities and counties that were thinking of deploying these networks came to Muniwireless.com as did journalists from The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and other mainstream publications. Continue reading »